celiac attack.

Love this!
Taken from a celiac support group.

I have known that I have celiac disease for almost four years now, but I have been suffering with the symptoms for about six. At first I thought it was stress, then I thought it was diabetes, then I thought I was just dying for no reason. I know that sounds dramatic, but when everything you eat makes you sick and you don't know why, you can jump to some rather drastic conclusions. I went from perfect health to weekly migraines, chronic fatigue, mild depression, and a host of GI issues that made me never want to eat again. Yes, it was that bad.

[Fun fact: Celiac can cause mild to moderate depression... So if you randomly start crying at the way Peter treats Meg on Family Guy, maybe take an allergy test. Really. This happened.]

After going on an elimination diet, my doctor and I realized what the problem was and I started getting better. Unfortunately, this was before being gluten-free became the new thing, so everything tasted rather terrible. I remember biting into a cereal bar in my coworker's office, and bursting into tears because it was just so disgusting. It tasted like a tree, and the thought of having to eat like that forever was just too much. (I'm not a very emotional lady, but I feel some type of way about food!) Since then, I have found bread that tastes like bread, and can generally tell what is safe and what will make me feel like dying. At least, I thought I could...

Over the last six months, my symptoms came back. Just like pre-diagnosis, I first chalked it up to stress. Spring semester kicked my ass start to finish, so it was a logical conclusion. But even when the stress went away, I still felt kinda bad. I functioned in society and hung out with people and acted fine, but the recovery time of every outing grew longer and longer. Then I started feeling really bad. It is difficult to put into words how scary it is to not know why you physically can't get out of bed. Or to know that you have to go out and not be sure if you'll have the energy to walk up the two flights of stairs to your apartment when you get back. Or to be afraid to eat the food in your own kitchen. To put it mildly, it sucks really bad.

Clearly, I was missing something, so I went to my phone. A while back, I downloaded a UPC scanner app that reads labels and tells people with food allergies if the item is safe or not. This thing is a godsend, and it has saved me from hidden gluten many times before. I scanned everything in my cabinets but found no gluten. Fridge - nothing. Freezer... boom. Mystery solved. My popsicles weren't gluten free. Wait, what? Let me repeat that: my POPSICLES (which claim to be an all natural, no sugar added, healthy dessert) were not gluten free. Dude, seriously? WTF...

In short, the culprit was maltodextrin, a food additive that is commonly made of wheat. Since this scare, I have gotten into the habit of scanning everything that doesn't explicitly state "gluten free" on the label but also doesn't list "wheat" in its allergy disclosure. And you know what? Wheat has been in ~85% of food! And, in ~97% of these instances, it was in an additive. Caramel coloring is the main one, and is found in everything from ginger ale to salad dressing. (I literally went through five brands of Italian dressing before I could find a safe one.) This is crazy to me. This is why I was so sick... and I'm sure I wasn't the only one.

Me being Polly Positive and all, I have searched for a silver lining in all of this, and here it is: Being gluten-free has reminded me of how lucky I am to be able to afford real food. I've never had a lot of money (and since I work in education, I probably never will), but I've never been too broke to not be able to keep myself healthy. I've also never been too far from a Whole Foods to be able to find things that won't kill me, and have an iPhone app that keeps me safe. If I were on food stamps or had a limited amount of money with which to buy food, I don't know what I would do. I wonder how poor people deal with this disease. I mean, how can you deal with something that requires so much money and effort to manage? My bread alone costs $7, and I can only find it at Whole Foods. (Truth be told, there is GF bread at the grocery store in my hood, but it tastes sand. No bueno.)

And sure, I can eat as many fruits and vegetables as I want... but how many poor families have access to that? In the late night hours, when I'm hungry from [studying], I have scoured my local bodegas for anything remotely okay for me to eat. All that is available for someone with a gluten issue are salty snacks and canned beans. Definitely not the healthiest options. There has been so much talk about food deserts lately, and whenever I hear that I always think about my celiacs. How do they survive? Food policy and politics are just as tricky as the education stuff I study, and there is no quick fix that either.

I would never choose to be gluten free, and I really hope I don't pass this thing on to my kids. It's really hard to stay 100% healthy, and every time I make dinner plans with friends I feel like I'm inconveniencing them since my diet is so limiting. (Good thing I'm not a vegetarian, or else I'd be extra screwed!) Not sure why people willingly eat like this, but word to those who do: There are better ways to lose weight than cutting out 75% of your diet... Like exercise and eating real food. Just saying...

[another lazy post]

{Attempting to follow through on my summer goal to blog at least once per week. Even if they look like this.}

Another Tumblr find! I love this list, and wish I would have found it when I was still working with teenagers everyday. These tips are perfect for creative types but also for anyone who needs to get things done. Personally, I believe that #16 and #26 are the keys to productivity (and that #25 is the key to life), but that's just my opinion.

Enjoy!

optimism isn't optional.

Nothing bothers me more than being in a classroom full of disaffected education people. It is beyond frustrating to listen to folks who are responsible for educating children bitch and moan about the field that they are in, as if they aren't in the position to do something about it. Umm, you chose to be an educator! If you don't like it, please leave. Kids don't need negative adults in their lives. Sometimes I want to tell these people to change jobs... And sometimes I do.

I get it though. It is really easy to become pessimistic about changing the education system for the better when so much research shows just how difficult that is. Study after study shows how so-called "reform" efforts don't work, and serve only to highlight all of the roadblocks that make real systemic improvement so difficult to achieve instead of showing how change can be possible. Couple this with the fact that many of the people in the classroom are former (or current) educators who have been beat down by the whole 'educators are worthless and should all be fired' line of thought that figures prominently in the media and mainstream "reform" efforts.

Speaking from experience, it is truly demoralizing to work hard for your students and their families all day, only to turn on the news and have some politician or pundit who has never worked in a school saying that you're the problem with the education system. It is even harder to hear and read the comments from community members who don't think that your students deserve a quality education in the first place because they are poor, not white, and, in their opinions, won't amount to anything anyway. In my last year in Philadelphia (a district that probably won't be a district for much longer), it became very clear that many members of the public, even those who worked for the public schools, were not supporters of public education. After spending hours helping kids do things like pick colleges, get over divorces and breakups, cope with the deaths of loved ones, come out safely to parents and friends, learn to study better, etc., hearing that I was a waste of taxpayer money was, to say the very least, tough.

So yes, I get where the negativity comes from. Really. But really, education folks, get over it. It's not about us, it's about the kids. We know they deserve better, and unless we keep our chins up and hearts open, we know they won't get it.

Everything looks bleak when all you know is bleakness. But we know that things can be better. We wouldn't be pursuing this line of work if we didn't think that. Optimism comes from the ability to both imagine better options and believe that these options are attainable. If you know that something is possible and work with that goal in mind, then it will happen. Pessimism, on the other hand, comes from helplessness. When you don't believe that things can change, you don't imagine things changing, and guess what? They don't change. Pessimism is easy because it requires nothing. Optimism, on the other hand, requires agency. Optimism requires blind (or at least naive), awareness. It requires an 'I don't give a [crap]' attitude about what you're up against, and the tenacity to see it through.

Optimism is hard, but it isn't optional. Without a belief that the education system can get better, it won't.